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Aldi, owned by the same German billionaire as Trade Joe’s, also has clerks who memorize prices rather than scan.

If you’ve never seen them in action, it’s interesting. The rapidly point with one hand and type in prices in the register with another. It’s much faster since they don’t have to pick up every item and swipe it.

Glad to hear that you’re helping not raiding charitable food pantries.

Canned food is unhealthy and tastes worse than fresh or frozen.

Really, 40 cans of baked beans? You deserve better!

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Ordered my first 40 franc gold coin from a French coin dealer about 12 days ago. It was the last one I needed for a complete set of every ruler and republican government from 1800 to the end of gold currency. All the others are 20 francs.

Most of the rest are from ebay, but the prices on the last and rarest one was just too high on ebay. I figured it might be my last chance to buy under $1900.

There’s still more to buy, as I’d like a French Tunisia 20 Francs, Austrian and Hungarian 20 Florins, and a Spanish 25 Peseta, which are all exactly the same size under the Latin Monetary Union. I already have similar but not identical sized gold coins from England, Holland, and the USA.

The cheapest of my 20 Francs was 8% below spot when gold was at $1200 using a combination of ebay promos and a cash back credit card. I think they are some of the best gold coins to have for investment, as a few of them can be found for no premium above spot and they are incredibly hard to counterfeit due to their small 0.1867 oz size and very elaborate design. Easy to buy and sell too, as a $380 coin is just more liquid than a $2100 1oz bar.

The two most common of the series is the French Rooster 20F and the Swiss Helvetia 20F which was still being made into the 1950s. Unfortunately you can’t find them at melt price, but when the market normalizes they’ll probably go back there.

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Scaredy, it sounds like you got a good deal because that was priced for the food insecure. You should be giving them stuff.

Maybe it’s for the best you swooped in on donations for folks facing hard times, fasting is healthy and canned food is dangerously salty. You’ll hopefully not be actually eating 50 cans of “almost” expired baked beans.

:-}

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Scaredy good guess overnight high was 29.9.

The gap between the physical and paper price already happened. Back in March silver was as low as 14 on the electronic markets, but at least $5 more in physical markets. This gap has declined but still exists.

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The Feds can tank gold because they have a giant stockpile. They sold the entire US Strategic Stockpile in 1980-81. Impeccable timing, as that was the all time high adjusting for inflation.

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Lately I got some insight on how it feels to participate in the bubble, having shorted the 99-01 tech bubble as a minor in an account mom set up for me, rented throughout the RE bubble, and sat out the current stock bubble.

Every time I buy more physical gold and silver, the next day it is worth far more than I paid for it. The mental sensation of overcoming reluctance to spend money is almost immediately rewarded with more money!

Buy at 23, a 7-year high? Maybe just 20oz, I’ve always wanted a full roll of random Morgan dollars. Three days later, each one is worth 20% more than I paid. Further, the breakdown in physical markets has led to both panic buying at high premiums and panic selling at low premiums. The arbitrage really isn’t a good use of my time, but it is fun to “win.”

Silver has anothing two things going for it similar to bitcoin: easier to buy than sell. Second, it has a near 24-hour markets. The only time silver isn’t actively trading with online COMEX quotes is late Friday (afterhours US trading ends) to midday Sunday (Monday Asian trading opens), otherwise it is a 24-hour market.

Decided to take money off the table the easy way by shorting a small amount of SLV rather than sell physical. Looked into selling calls, but call premiums on SLV are weirdly small, I almost want to buy some calls now.

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What’s painful about silver bullion? A $60 a year safe deposit box holds about $15k worth. A lot of banks will waive the charge too if you have their premium checking account or large balances. You can also just bury it in your yard like a pirate, just be sure to say where in your will, to be dramatically revealed in a sealed codicil.

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Wow, 2.81% when I posted in 2018, 0.51% right now.

If I had to guess at a bottom, I’d say 0.35% with intraday dipping to 0.25%.

Stock market seems overvalued, but where else can you get even 1% if you have $20 billion? Not bonds.

If we stay at the current level today, the best 30 year mortgages should get to 1.9% no points.

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99.999+% of the intelligent life in the universe would consider YOU to be an alien from another planet.

Extraterrestrial is the inclusive term.

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“ But i dont believ e there is any physical reality.
I firmly believe we are living in a computer simulation run on alien computers.”

The first part is right, reality is mental (subjective idealism). See the work of George Berkeley for details. The second part is wrong. We exist as ideas in the minds of ourselves, others, and of God.

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Been thinking about this lately. I love the earnings and divvies on telcos, but I am concerned they will borrow a ton of money for 5G that few consumers will pay extra for.

Agree with the comments here about lack of a use case.

Verizon’s “benefits of 5G” page is technobabble about IoT, “good for first responders,” which is 1% of the population, and the only real positive is 5G supposedly won’t bog down in crowded areas. I do dislike how data speed gets very slow even in a busy strip mall and in downtown SF, and is awful in airports.

But Covid undermines this single selling point. And not sure this benefit is worth even $50 a year to 90% of the population.

I’d like the stock of a telco that says “We’re going to wait and see with 5G, and we’re comfortable with the risk of losing a small number of data hog customers because of this.”

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That’s a bit vague to make a suggestion.

If it is an eviction, find a full time eviction specialist.

If a prospective tenant wants to negotiate the terms of a residential lease regarding something other than the rent, deposit, and how many months, that strikes me as a red flag and sign to find another tenant.

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“Not going to help home affordability in SD I am afraid.”

I don’t like your framing of bullish news on real estate prices and residential rents one bit sir.

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IDK, Intel still is making billions consistently, the rest of the industry mostly isn’t.

AMD’s books show an accumulated deficit of $7 billion, ie prior year losses of billions in excess of retained earnings.

Making computer parts seems to be an industry like airlines: over the long haul, losses greatly exceed the sporadic profits.

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Having all of your liquid net worth in paper and electrons during a plague and depression is scary. And despite the stock and RE markets doing fine, 12% unemployment and 35% YoY GDP decline is a deep depression.

A paper dollar from 1921 is worth maybe $2 if you can find someone who collects them, but more realistically just $1.

A silver dollar from 1921 is worth $20 in poor condition, $30 if in perfect shape.

I don’t believe the conspiracy theory that SLV/GLD is a scam without actual silver/GLD backing it. But after Enron, Wirecard, Worldcom, AIG, etc., there certainly is some risk the metal isn’t there.

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